


Picture 1962

by apositi (aeine)



Category: MindCrack RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-05-03 23:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5310737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeine/pseuds/apositi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He adjusts how he sits for a moment, and leans forward. “If there is anything I can do to help, I’m willing to do it.”</p><p>She can’t be angry at the sincere man who her husband fell in love with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picture 1962

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote and [posted](http://mindcracklove.dreamwidth.org/654836.html) this a while back, and looking back on it, this work falls pretty flat. However, for archiving purposes I decided to post it under this account anyway.

It’s a cottage on the outskirts of a city in Alabama. There is a garden out in front, and tomatoes are its main feature. They’re bright, red, and plump, hanging down heavily from the vines. Other plants surround it, like the heady mint in the clay pot. It isn’t a big cottage. It’s small, and the walls are white, stark white against dark, red brick.

Inside, in the kitchen, sits a wife. She’s grieving. She doesn’t seem to be a woman of weakness, but neither does she looks to be a woman of pride. There’s a newspaper from yesterday, but already it looks crumpled. The obituary lies separate next to it. The air inside the house is bitter, quite like the smell of newspapers, quite different from the fresh wind outside.

She is at the dining table, the one he had sawn himself from the oak he’d cut down last winter. Farther down, crossing through the hallway and into the living room, is their little daughter. Like her mother, she has unremarkable, blue eyes, and beautifully curly blonde hair. The daughter sleeps quietly in her cot, while the mother grieves in the kitchen.

A postman had stopped by. He didn’t bring any mail, no crisp, white envelope to be torn open, but he had brought a bouquet of flowers. Amongst them sat a card, signed by nearly everyone in the neighbourhood. It’d prompted her to start crying again.

And now, he stops by. He knocks on the door. The pauses between the knocks tell the wife, the mother, whoever she was right now, that the caller is hesitant. A fourth knock, and she gets up, wiping away her tears, and answers the door.

“Excuse me,” he says in a low voice. South Carolina immediately jumps to her mind. The accent is too prominent. She suspects. “Is this the home of Mrs. Zisteau?”

She nods almost bitterly. She prompts him. “May I ask who is inquiring?”

“I’m—I’m Vechs,” he answers honestly.

This is the man her husband fell in love with. This is the man that her husband never stopped loving. She is tempted to close the door and yell at him through the panels, but then again, that wasn’t how she was raised.

She settles for acknowledgment. “I know.”

The sun is burning down, shining through the areas that the porch roof doesn’t cover. It beats at the two. The fan is sputtering inside the tiny, little cottage. It’s hot, and she’s parched all of the sudden. And this is certainly how she wasn’t raised, so she opens the door a little wider.

“Come in, please. You must be thirsty, coming all the way up from the city. Glass of water?” she offers, but she’s already bustling through the kitchen. On her tiptoes she can reach where they kept the glasses. She brings one down and fills it with water from the second-hand refrigerator they had somehow miraculously been able to afford.

She sets it down in front of him. “Lemon?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “No, thank you,” and it’s a polite decline that continues the charade. They’ve only broken it once, and that was when she’d told him he knew who he was. The man her husband loves. The city boy he’d spoken so fondly about, as though he thought his wife didn’t suspect anything.

“I’m Emma,” she introduces herself. They’ve already arranged themselves around the dinner table, and Vechs has had to stop himself from looking at the obituary. She pours a glass of water out for herself, and drinks it. His still stands full, and hers she sets down empty.

He is always hesitant. “I know,” he says. “I was written a letter.”

“By my husband, I’m presuming.” She rests her arms on the edge of the table, and her right hand plays with the plain, scuffed gold ring worn by her left. Her fingers are slender, and her ring loosely fits. “What’d he say?”

He swallows. “He’d asked that I try my damndest to take care of you two.”

The kitchen looks empty. She’s looking around, and in every instance, she sees her husband standing, laughing boisterously with a smirk on his face. The cabinets, the flooring, the tables are all reminders of him.

She wants to be angry. She wants to be furious that she wasn’t the only one that Zisteau has ever truly loved, and even that she doubts. She wants to be able to throw things at Vechs, to yell at him, to ask what right he had to even attempt to console a grieving wife whose husband may not even possibly have loved her.

“That’s complete shit,” she murmurs. “A stranger?”

Vechs stares and sighs. “I’m willing, honestly. There is not a thing I am not willing to do for your daughter. I owe my life to him.” He adjusts how he sits for a moment, and leans forward. “If there is anything I can do to help, I’m willing to do it.”

She can’t be angry at the sincere man who her husband fell in love with.

“Tally needs help,” she whispers. “She’s sick.”

Is it some sort of punishment, she wonders, some form of torment sent after her for some unknown crime she committed? She doesn’t know, but she knows that the death of her husband could apparently not make up for it. She looks at it, searches the blue eyes, the glimmer of green in them, and presses her lips together.

The tears had already began to fall again.

“I don’t want your money,” she says determinedly. “I don’t want it. Tally needs it, though,” she adds. It’s more to herself than anything. “I just—I can’t. Please, please just leave me. Can’t I play the role of grieving wife for another day?”

“Hey, hey,” he calls out consolingly. “Look, I’m offering. It’s the least I can do.”

She blurts out, the words coming fast from her trembling, pale lips. “But he left you! He chose me. How—how you can you be so sincere? How can you love someone so much after they’ve married? How?”

“I can’t answer that.”

She understands and looks away. “Please, leave.”

Vechs stands. “I’m sorry. Thank you for the tea. The offer still stands,” he adds in a mild sort of hope. The kitchen is still burning, the heat of the sun pushing through the curtains. Lace curtains, the old kind, the type that’s yellow and weathered. The kind that only the poor buy.


End file.
